Remembrance and Repetition: Analysis of a Mapuche Dream Narrative

投稿日: 2012/04/21 12:13:51

Key Words: Mapuche, dreams, repetition, images

----------

1. The Mapuche Indians of Chile have always been considered to be a fairly acculturated people. Yet, up to now, many of them have continued to define themselves to be Mapuche, in spite of the continual pressures from Chilean society. A remarkable fact in this concern is that they keep paying great attention to their dreams. "Dreams tell you the Truth", they always say, and this Truth naturally seems to influence their thoughts and conducts considerably. This is why I am interested here to examine what dreams are for them, and what kind of Truth they adhere to.

In this paper I intend to analyze a narrative given by Sebastian, an old Mapuche man, in order to illustrate how the Mapuche Indians today are living their Truth. In the narrative, Sebastian relates how he dreamt, more than twenty years ago, a dream that I name here as "the helicopter dream"; what this dream meant to him during those years when things were getting more and more unfavorable for the Mapuche way of life; and finally, how the "real" meaning of this dream was revealed to him in 1987, that is, twenty years after he dreamt it.

***

2. Before taking up this narrative, however, let us briefly consider some Mapuche ideas about dreams, and the close relationship between their dreams (or some of their dreams), myths and rituals.

The Mapuche insist that dreams should always be told, and curiously, they say that it is because by this way dreams can easily be remembered. Thus they often spend some morning hours recounting their dreams to each other. They do not hasten too much to find the meaning of each dream in general, and some of them affirm that the meaning will become known by itself when the time comes. This might be one of the reasons why they say that they should always remember their dreams.

Among many kinds of dreams, the Mapuche pay special attention to a genre of dreams that is called füta peuma ("great dreams"): dreams which are considered to be messages from Wenumapu Chau Wenumapu Nuke (their supreme God) or from some other spiritual being.

These dreams have to be remembered with great care, and they are repeatedly recalled by the dreamer. It should not be difficult to imagine that these "great dreams" may be related to Mapuche myths. Indeed they do have many themes in common. Actually, Mapuche mythology contains in itself innumerable accounts of "great dreams" dreamt by their ancestors.

Another important point about "great dreams" is that they often include some direct or indirect messages which urge the dreamer to realize some ritual act. For example, once a Mapuche dreamt of a yellow bull, which was a clear request for him to convoke a kamarikun, their greatest sacrificial ritual (in which the chief sacrificial animal is the yellow bull). This was something impossible for him to realize at that moment, but he kept this dream carefully in his memory; and sixteen years later, he finally convoked kamarikun, and thus fulfilled God's demand.

In this way, Mapuche dreams, or more exactly their "great dreams", are very closely related to Mapuche myths and rituals. This point is also attested by the fact that both mythical themes and ritual scenes appear quite frequently in their dreams. And there would be little doubt that these images, presented in their dreams, appeal much to the Mapuche as something related to their ideal way of life. This is the point that I will examine with Sebastian's "great dream" --"the helicopter dream".

***

3. In his narrative, after some introductory comments, Sebastian first recollects how he was some twenty years ago when he had the dream. On the one hand, he was an earnest believer of the Mapuche religion, and held (and still holds) the important office of sargento in the village ritual organization. Actually, he says that he was destined to do so because, as a child, he received a dream message from God. On the other hand, however, those years were when the village people were strongly influenced by both Catholic and Protestant missionaries; so much so that all Sebastian's sons and daughters were converted to Protestantism, thus rejecting totally their father's religion. Sebastian, in this manner, was torn internally by the two contradicting forces. He felt so alone that sometimes he almost lost his faith in the Mapuche God.

It was during one of these moments of doubt that he had his dream. In the dream he was at the barn of his house, watching the blue sky. There he saw many people running on horseback, circling counterclockwise, that is, just as the Mapuche do in their sacrificial ritual of kamarikun. Then he suddenly noticed a helicopter circling with them. It made four turns (the number four means completion for the Mapuche) in the sky and then landed near Sebastian's house. As he watched it, two soldiers came out of the helicopter, and came near Sebastian. One of them had a heart (which is clearly reminiscent of the heart of sacrificial animals that are presented to God in kamarikun) in his hand. He came to Sebastian and asked him what it was. Sebastian answered that it was "the faithful's heart". Then the soldier said: "All right. So, when you feel sorrowful, just look up to the sky!" and extended his arm up to the sky.

This dream impressed him so much that it remained with him for years to come. It was, as he says, the only solid basis for him to maintain his faith in the Mapuche religion. But there was one thing in the dream that he never got to understand: the meaning of the heart. He asked the elders, but no one could give him a clear answer.

Years passed. In 1987, there was a weak resurgence of the Mapuche religion among the villagers, and they held a kamarikun after some twenty years. Sebastian, as his village's sargento, now had to play quite an important role in the ritual. He was not confident of himself, since he evidently lacked experience, but he believed that God would help him.

The day came. The village priest prayed. Some people danced and ran at Sebastian's command, circling counterclockwise around the altar; others rode on their horses and ran circling counterclockwise around the ritual field. And then came the climax: the young men turned the yellow bull (the main sacrificial animal) over, and extracted its beating heart. The heart was passed to Sebastian, who was supposed to pray to God with it in his hand. At that moment, he did not know exactly how he had to pray because he had never played such an important role. Anyway, he decided to begin praying. Suddenly, he remembered his dream of twenty years ago: he remembered how the soldier had the heart in his hand, and what the soldier told him. And at that precise instant he knew what the prayer should be like. This, he says, was the very meaning of the heart.

***

4. Now I will analyze this narrative from two interrelated perspectives. First I will see how the narrative moves in the narrator's imagination from one plane of spacetime to another. Then I will examine the recurrent images found throughout the narrative.

At first, the story refers to the contradiction between the Mapuche world and the Chilean world. The former is, in Sebastian's mind, related to the almost mythical memory of his childhood dream, and he knows that it is decisively important for him. The latter, however, is also important and he cannot separate himself from it, as he cannot separate himself from his sons and daughters.

Then he recounts the helicopter dream. The spacetime of this dream is a concrete one, because it happened during his sleep some twenty years ago. Nonetheless, it is also reminiscent of the eternal world of Heaven (Wenumapu), which is represented by the people in the sky.

Actually, in this case, there is an ambiguity in the very word "blue sky" (kallfii wenu), because it means both the blue sky itself and the uppermost layer of Heaven. Now, the same kind of doubleness can be found in the kamarikun scene in 1987. It was held in real place and time, and simultaneously it is penetrated by timeless elements such as ritual symbols. In the final part, the image of the heart triggers Sebastian's memory of the helicopter dream. In his imagination, the spacetime of his dream, that of the ritual and that of the world of Heaven are all dissolved together, and are absorbed into the eternal world of God.

It would be clear from above that the narrative is full of recurrent images which go through several planes of spacetime and unite them. First, there are some repeated images of movement such as counterclockwise movement, four-time repetition, and the act of looking up to the sky: these are important because they appeal strongly to the motor-sensory imagery of the Mapuche, and recall their memory of their rituals.

Secondly, some powerful symbols appear repeatedly in the narrative; the most important of all is the heart, on which the narrative finally converges. Thirdly, there are some expressions such as "I live" or "I am sad" (which do not appear in this summary)· that appear here and there in the narrative. These expressions can be considered to be related to the Mapuche's profound ideas about their existence, and they give a philosophical touch to this narrative.

All these points seem to indicate that this narrative achieves an admirable presentation of the Mapuche religious ideas. It resorts to the various spheres of their imagery such as the motor-sensory, the symbolic and the philosophical, and finally refers to what could be called their religious Essence, which is glimpsed in Sebastian's imagination at the last moment.

Without any doubt, this was the Truth that Sebastian found. (back)

***

5. A problem remains, however. Why was Sebastian able to reproduce the Mapuche Truth so well in this narrative? It will be seen that this question is related to his realism. But let us first examine if Sebastian does not deviate in any way from the traditional Mapuche thinking in this narrative, with all his repetitions of traditional ideas.

In fact, there is a detail which may seem strange for the traditional Mapuche: the helicopter.

There would be no doubt, in this dream, that it serves as the vehicle of the messenger from God. Nonetheless, according to the normal Mapuche interpretation of dreams, helicopters, along with cars or planes, are thought to be transformations of malignant spirits sent by witches.

Another remarkable detail is the confession of his unfaithful statement (which does not appear in this summary): he once said that the Mapuche religion will probably be overwhelmed by Protestantism. This would be an impermissible statement for a person in his position, but Sebastian does not seem to feel guilty about it and simply says that he was in the wrong.

These facts indicate, in a word, that the dark elements of traditional Mapuche ideas are completely eliminated from Sebastian's thinking. He does not believe in witchcraft, and that is why the helicopter can appear as something divine in his dream. Moreover, he does not accept those fatalistic ideas about error and guilt, and that is why he can move freely from the Mapuche way of thinking to the Chilean one. Hence his realism. While the traditional Mapuche narratives begin in general with unquestioned mythical truths, Sebastian's begins with a profound doubt. His is not a combination of mythical stories, but is composed as a developmental drama in which the narrator begins with nothing and ends with belief. It is certainly thanks to this fact that we are able to follow him in his approach to the Truth in this narrative.

It is clear that in this regard Sebastian can also be seen as a destroyer of his tradition, because he feels no fear of rejecting some of its fundamental elements. In fact, another series of repetition begins here, that is, the repetition from Sebastian to his sons and daughters. In a sense they did not betray their father; they just repeated their father's fundamental doubt, only to produce different results.

***

6. In this paper I have tried to examine, by analyzing Sebastian's narrative, what the Truth of their dreams is for the Mapuche today. Now it could be said that the Truth of their dreams means a lot to them because it triggers in the dreamer an experience of profound repetition of their ideal, including the unconscious or physical level.

But what we can also learn from Sebastian's case is that one type of repetition does not exclude other ones. This is an especially important point when we observe that the Mapuche today are obliged to live both in the Mapuche world and in the Chilean world, and are internally torn in this contradiction. The helicopter in Sebastian's dream could be considered as a condensed symbol of this situation.